Gentlemen,
Please allow me to get trough the opinions placed on this tread. I ask you also to be kind enough to forgive my bad "english accent" as I spent my thirty two year career flying in the opposite side of the world.
I enjoyed the tales of Prince of Dzun. I can remember the times when the real good mates could land a DC3 on the three points because the short strips on the Rain Forest were flooded. It was a time when Vref was only a reference and the pilots didn't be afraid looking the airspeed coming down close to the ground. In our jargon in this part of the world we say that this means to feel the aircraft in your a**
I feel that I am one of those transition types. I flew DC3's, Lookeed Electras, B727's and a lot of hours in EFIS operations. I can remember the good old mates that landed the B727 with flaps 40 on very short runways after NDB approaches. I can also remember how thight has been my conversion from classic jets to new generation ones; I remember my very young simulator mate going faster than me trough automation, when I always decided to disconnect the autopilot and hand fly the machine when everything seemed too much confused.
Aviation changed a lot. I don't want to raise the question about safety statistics, regulations, role of CAA's,etc... We are now much more controlled, we can no more fly low and slow. We share our environment with a lot of other traffics, we are "seen" and even limited by electronic devices that doesn't allow us to explore the limits of our handling capacities.
Of course the development of technology brought safety and improvement to our industry. But it has changed the role of our profession without changing the level of responsibility of each one of us. In these modern times we must carefully evaluate every single decision taking into account the tight regulations that weren't the rule in the 60's or even 70's.
Our profession has changed since the 80's. May be is technology, may be is economical globalization. May be is all. I remeber the old pay when I got enough to change my car and give my family a decent life. Those were the days, my friends, when we all enjoyed the layovers together. Now I see the very junior guys trying to bring home as much money they can to to feed their children, to pay their houses.
I lost my job. Altough very senior in my company I was sacked together with the board of my association because of an industrial action where we didn't discuss pay increase. We were trying to abort the transfer of pilots to low cost carriers inside of our economic group. Very close to retirement I am experiencing how much aviation has changed in these thirty years... I am now looking for a job for half pay, may be twice far from home.
I have no doubt that we pilots are very similar all over the world. Of course I can enjoy the "tales" of Prince of Dzun from the times when suitable and adequate were not so important as one's handling and self navigating abilities. I miss these old good times when VOR meant visual over the river and I always pursued to be as good as the old mates that grease landed on three points. But I keep in mind every word of all of you that resist daily to "prostitute" our work conditions.
I wish you all the best. And hope to be again in a cockpit to make sure that I will have a safe retirement.